Technical Field
The present disclosure relates to a vehicular lamp which includes a plurality of light emitting units having an organic electro luminescence (EL) device.
Related Art
Some of vehicular lamps such as rear combination lamps, for example, include a light emitting unit which utilizes an organic EL (Electro Luminance) device (hereinafter, referred to as an “organic EL light emitting unit”) as a light emitting device. Organic EL light emitting units which are used in vehicular lamps have a general construction in which an organic EL device having an organic light emitting layer is formed on a glass substrate, for example, and the organic EL device is sealed by a glass or metallic cap.
JP-A-2011-150887 discloses a vehicular lamp which includes a plurality of organic EL light emitting units having organic light emitting layers (light emitting areas) which are different in shape or size from one another. It is possible to realize an improvement in degree of freedom in designing a light distribution pattern or in design of an external appearance of the vehicular lamp by having the plurality of organic EL light emitting units having the organic light emitting layers which are different in shape or size from one another.
However, in the present situations, the shapes or sizes of substrates and caps of an organic EL light emitting unit are set to match the shapes or sizes of corresponding organic light emitting layers. Thus, in the case of the vehicular lamp in which the organic light emitting layers have the different shapes or sizes, the shapes or sizes of the substrates and caps of the individual organic EL light emitting units are set newly one by one to match the shapes or sizes of the corresponding organic light emitting layers. This leads to an increase in the number of man-hours, promoting an increase in production costs of the vehicular lamp.
Here, in relation to vehicular lamps which include a plurality of organic EL light emitting units, it is considered to change the shapes or sizes of organic light emitting layers not only in one vehicular lamp but also between different vehicular lamps to differentiate a characteristic such as design of one vehicular lamp from that of another according to vehicle lines or grades, for example. In this way, in the event that the shapes or sizes of the organic light emitting layers are made to differ from one another between the vehicular lamps, quite a large number of types of organic EL light emitting units have to be produced. Consequently, forming substrates and caps newly one by one to match the shapes or sizes of corresponding organic light emitting layers in the way described above leads to a large increase in production costs of vehicular lamps which are to be produced in a small amount but in various types.